On-Call Compensation (or lack of)

[Bluespider]

I've been (in the past) subjected to many and varied on call rates and I've heard of a few as well.
In my experience companies don't want to pay the equivalent of what would be fair for the level of disturbance that is experienced.
I've worked places where it was as little as 113 GBP per week for on call stand by but 30 GBP per call plus OT if it went over 4 hours. if you balanced the books correctly that worked out quite well. I've heard of IBM paying 1/4 time for the entire oncall period which i think can be quite lucrative.

I'm quite glad to now not be in focus for on call, the permies do it to bolster their take home, I prefer my weekends and evenings to be mine, not sure I could put a price on them, certainly not one a client could afford.

I would imagine it would depend on the likelyhood of being called out? I've done it where it was money for nothing, a call once in a blue moon so it was a little extra for carrying a phone for a week, other places, the oncall was used as it was supporting 24x7 production.

Unless you really really want the money, I'd be inclined to let the juniors do it, as mentioned above its a far bigger take home for them.

[monobrow]

£500 a week is aboove average in my opinion.

if you don't want to do it, then don't sign up for it, they can't force you to. If you have already signed, then tough, you need to find another job.

HTH, welcome to being a grown up.

[SueEllen]

£500 a week is aboove average in my opinion.

if you don't want to do it, then don't sign up for it, they can't force you to. If you have already signed, then tough, you need to find another job.

HTH, welcome to being a grown up.

Harsh but fair.

[Wanderer]

No it's not generous, it's a pain in the ass.

Perhaps it doesn't seem generous to me and you, but in the olden days when I was a lowly paid junior I would have jumped at the chance to double my gross income by being on call. You can get a lot of Vaseline for that much money...

[NetworkEngineer]

Perhaps it doesn't seem generous to me and you, but in the olden days when I was a lowly paid junior I would have jumped at the chance to double my gross income by being on call. You can get a lot of Vaseline for that much money...

Some of these responses aren't helpful; I'm not a junior.

I'm a senior on £47k, so I don't see how, in what world, £500 plus nothing else is fine. For a 24/7 interational network criticial environment, I don't see how £500 can be seen as enough, personally.

In addition, everybody, regardless of status, gets the same money. If you would accept this, you would have to be either desperate or crazy.

[MrRobin]

Sorry if this was answered already... I have been skim reading...

We've established that you get £500 extra for being on-call for a full 7 days. If you get called at say 3am, do you then charge for overtime on top?

[SueEllen]

Some of these responses aren't helpful; I'm not a junior.

I'm a senior on £47k, so I don't see how, in what world, £500 plus nothing else is fine. For a 24/7 interational network criticial environment, I don't see how £500 can be seen as enough, personally.

In addition, everybody, regardless of status, gets the same money. If you would accept this, you would have to be either desperate or crazy.

The reason for Wanderer's and monobrow's view is that employment contracts are negotiable from the beginning.

This means when you took on the job or when they asked you to do this, you should have convinced them that as you are senior and more experienced you should only do on-call work at certain times i.e. when one of the junior bods can't cope.

While from your side the amount of money you get isn't worth it for you, for your employer they can get someone who would happily take the money to do it, so why should they pay more?

[monkeyrhythm]

I also work in networking (although I do more architecture than engineering nowadays) and I think that the support model of the OP's company is fundamentally flawed. Yes the business can apparently fill the on-call requirement by juniors who will be very happy with £500 for a weeks on-call but what happens when it all kicks off with a bitch of an issue that the junior can't resolve, who do they escalate it too? Am I reading it correctly that there is one individual, representing one line of support (first/second line if it's a junior) 'out of hours' - which in actuality is more than 50% of the time? Additionally the support company and customer expect an initial response to be provided within 30 minutes? It appears to me that the company are attempting to offer the level of support some companies use a 24/7 NOC (Network Operations Centre) to provide (e.g. the OP's company are trying to do it on the cheap)

I do know of companies that structure support operations similarly but it's essential that a Senior Network Engineer is at least on call. They could structure this whereby a junior has to respond initially and resolve issues where possible with a senior guy available to call on if required. On-call rates (and life impact as the senior guy would have less stringent response time and should be called on less, much of his support could/should be telephone based to the junior) could be structured accordingly.


In a nutshell: I wouldn't take what they're offering as it sounds sh*te but with one guy on call at at time why should the company pay you more just 'cos you're senior?

[NetworkEngineer]

Sorry if this was answered already... I have been skim reading...

We've established that you get £500 extra for being on-call for a full 7 days. If you get called at say 3am, do you then charge for overtime on top?

Hi MrRobin.

Regardless of the time of the call, nothing extra is paid. We have been told we can come in later in the morning, but this time would not equal the time we worked during the night.

ie: work 3 hours in the midnight hours, expected in the office at 10am rather than 9am.

If anything; it should surely be overtime at "time and a half".

One person must be on call for a full week, not negotiable.

We do have a NOC, but 80% of them are not very clued up.

[Bluespider]

Hi MrRobin.


We do have a NOC, but 80% of them are not very clued up.

Thats a fundamental issue, and not necessarily your responsibility to cover (unless you are responsible for training)

I think the main issue here is that most on here will answer fromn a contractors viewpoint, i.e. we get paid for what we work. agreed up front and remunerated accordingly. As a permie the rules are slightly different and negotiations not as easy.
Will this hamper your career progression if you decline ( I know i have been told in the past that it was part of my job and therefore like it or lump it). If they have anly recently introduced this then there should have been a 4 week notice period and a new contract issued stating the terms.

Only you can decide if the money on offer adequately covers your time and inconvenience. I think due to the taxation levels and the fact that all parties get equal then it wont be worth it. you are essentially doing the same job as the juniors for less money. you may as well ask for a demotion!
In my experience though, once decided these rates arent very easily shifted. the companies dig their heels in on this for some reason.